The best films of the first half of 2023: these are our cinema highlights

Wow! What a great cinema year is 2023 please? – and it’s only rest. Appropriately, we’ve polled the FILMSTARTS editorial team and put together some of the most exciting and noteworthy must-sees of the current season. We deliberately didn’t make a ranking, but want you to get a little inspired the next time you go to the cinema or browse the new streaming releases. Here are some of the movies we think you should have seen in 2023 so far. We hope you like our tips.

Highlight 2023: “Sun and concrete”

The autobiographical novel “Sonne und Beton” (Sun and concrete) by Felix Lobrecht, characterized by an extremely authentic clear language, became a bestseller in no time. David Wnendt’s film adaptation of the same name even surpassed the original. “Sonne und Beton” is one of the most intense, dynamic and moving German films of recent years. Inspired by classics such as “La Haine” or “Kids”, Wnendt and Lobrecht tell about a youth in the Gropiusstadt district of Berlin who actually has no prospects. But this satellite city, built on the drawing board, can’t get enough of the human factor. That’s why “Sun and Concrete” often hurts and frustrates, but also goes straight to the heart. Weeds never go away, this saying has rarely been more apt.

2023 Highlight: “Red Sky”

I just watched the trailer of the movie “Red Sky” by Christian Petzold again to get in the right mood for this text here. And yes, that was a good idea. Because the beautiful photos, the goosebumps-inducing music and the characters you fell in love with are immediately present and will probably never be forgotten. A film about a summer by the sea, about the value of friendship and love, and the fragility of life – a film that holds my breath because it is so gripping and evocative from the first to the last minute. For me, “Red Sky” is the cinema highlight of the year so far and probably my favorite Petzold movie.

Highlight 2023: “Babylon – intoxication of ecstasy”

By far my favorite movie of the year so far, Red Sky has already been snatched from me for this list so I’m going to pick the movie that surprised me the most in 2023. So far I’ve had little exposure to Damien’s movies Chazelle: I found the content of “Whiplash” repulsive and I found “La La Land” a stiff mimicry. And now this: “Babylon” is the kind of movie that doesn’t really get made anymore – ecstatic and overcrowded cinema, peppered with allusions and references, yet completely original. How Chazelle manages to reconcile Hollywood epic, brutal comedy, melodrama and musical film in three hours (and even leans towards surreal horror at one point) is hardly short of spectacular. At the box office, the $80 million film was penalized for such ambition. I, on the other hand, hope that “Babylon” won’t be Damien Chazelle’s last massive passion project.

2023 Highlight: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Actually, I should introduce you to “Past Lives” here, because it’s been a long time since I was more impressed by a movie. That’s how my very first 5 star review came about for a recent reboot here at FILMSTARTS.de. Since the emotional drama officially starts on August 10, 2023, but we look back at the first half of the year and I want to recommend something that you can watch immediately, my choice falls on “Spider-Man: Across The Spider”. -Verse”. With his brightly colored, exuberant graphics, he is the complete opposite at first glance, but he has one thing in common with my other highlight 2023: he also has a lot of heart and tells a story that is as captivating as it is exciting and touching. Come him definitely check it out in the cinema!

2023 Highlight: “Pathaan”

There were already a few cinema highlights for me this year: “The Woman in the Mist” was beautiful and many of the films my colleagues mentioned are also among the highlights of 2023 for me. But the best cinema visit of the year so far goes no doubt to the Indian Blockbuster “Pathaan” starring Shah Rukh Khan. I’ve never seen the audience go along like that, never had such a sense of spectacle in the cinema. Every slow-mo scene featuring Khan’s blow-drying was praised. Explosions here are even more blatant than in Michael Bay and the action is more intense than in “Fast and Furious”. “Pathaan” is megalomaniac, totally insane, but at the same time just awesome. This film burns on your retina in every scene, overflowing with beautiful people, even more beautiful action scenes and lots of heart and humor. Never mind that the Bollywood madness is part of a huge franchise – it’s easy to understand. Oh yes… and of course there is plenty of dancing too.

2023 Highlight: “The Flash”

Yes, The Flash crashed quite a bit at the box office. But the old DCEU (and arguably the supremacy of the superhero genre) is coming to an end. Personally, I think that’s a shame in this case – because I think DC really got it right with the amazingly heartwarming multiverse fun “The Flash”. I think it’s creative, surprising, funny and most of all well played by Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton and Maribel Verdú – and everything about the can of tomato paste was extremely emotional for me. My 4.5 star review is called “Best DC movie since The Dark Knight” and I still stand by that. And fan reactions to the two previews co-organized by FILMSTARTS in Munich and Hamburg went in the same direction.

Highlight 2023: “Beau is scared”

Every few years a movie comes out that leaves me speechless and a little lost at the cinema. What the hell did I see on the screen? Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother!” was one such movie, as was David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”. This year, Midsommar director Ari Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid” surprised me. The psychotic trip is an absolutely unbridled cinematic experience. A sometimes physically exhausting, cynical investigation into faith, Jewish culture, family and society. A sensory odyssey into the main character’s mental twists and turns. Despite its enormous playing time of 3 (!) hours, time flies by. Until the very last shot, the film’s incredibly creative and disturbing ideas continue to surprise you. If Franz Kafka had had a mother complex and directed films, then surely a work like “Beau Is Afraid” would have resulted from it.

Highlight 2023: “The staff room”

Cinema is emotion. Although this is often forgotten in major blockbusters between superheroes, one-man armies and Co., it was a German movie of all things in the first half of 2023 that finally made me feel something again. And how. “The Teacher’s Room” is terrifyingly realistic, gets more and more under your skin by the minute and would actually be laughable if it weren’t so hilarious. One of the most annoying, but perhaps also one of the most important films of the cinema year so far. Did you like “System Crasher”? Then put “The Teacher’s Room” at the top of your watchlist.

Highlight 2023: “Sparta”

After a report on the shooting caused serious controversy, Ulrich Seidl’s “Sparta” was screened alone in the smallest hall of the Hamburg Film Festival, only to quietly and secretly receive a German theatrical release. Away from the difficult, never quite pervasive background of the production, Seidl has managed to pull off an utterly engaging character study. After the grandiose “Rimini”, Seidl is characterized by an unusually disarming empathy that makes him observed but never judged. Here you guide a pedophile (greatly embodied by Georg Friedrich) through Romania, but he refuses any form of moralizing. “Sparta” is the work of an immensely mature filmmaker who has learned to listen rather than judge.